Free Third-Time Lucky by Jenny Oldfield Page B

rounding up cattle and singing around the campfire.
    The sun rose in a clear sky; the land was empty and windswept. At midday Matt stopped for gas while Kirstie went to check on Lucky. She made him drink and eat a little alfalfa, promised him that by the following day they would have reached their journey’s end. “Rainbow Mountain!” she whispered in his ear. “Sounds kinda nice, doesn’t it?”
    A listless Lucky nuzzled her hand, his lank mane brushing against her cheek.
    “It will be,” she said, resting her hand on his trembling neck. “And there’s a guy up there who everybody talks about as the best horse doctor around. OK, so he’s not your ordinary vet, with drugs and needles and stuff. He may be a little weird with his herbs and visions; who knows?”
    Coming back from the gas station shop with ice cream and candy bars, Matt raised his eyebrows at her, kidding her as usual. “Talk about weird!”
    “We’ll ignore that!” Kirstie told Lucky. She checked his leg bandages, his head collar, his hay net. “All we need to think about is Rainbow Mountain and persuading Zak Stone to make you better, OK?”
    In Montana you could see forever. Matt and Kirstie drove Lucky over the border early on Thursday morning. Hawks wheeled in the vast expanse of blue sky. The land to either side of the dirt road was dry, the grass brittle and dotted here and there with old red barns.
    They’d broken camp at dawn, kicked earth over their still smoldering campfire, and washed in the cold clear water of a nearby stream. Kirstie had groomed Lucky, trying not to notice the dull, lifeless condition of his once beautiful golden coat. She’d forced a little more feed on him, knowing how difficult it must be for him to chew and swallow when she heard the choked struggling intake of air into his lungs and the noisy, coughing exhalation. “Soon!” she’d whispered as she’d bolted the ramp into position, ready for the final leg of the journey. “Trust me!”
    She spent the morning in the passenger seat, tracing their way through the backcountry of southern Montana, shoulders hunched over the creased map. By eleven o’clock they’d passed through a couple of ghost towns—empty wooden houses with boarded-up windows, defunct fuel pumps by the roadside, a rusting, overgrown railway line that stopped in the middle of nowhere. Still the birds circled overhead, while watery clouds were dragged across the blue sky by a wind from the east. By midday, the rain set in.
    “Wentworth County.” Matt read the sign by the side of the road.
    Kirstie looked up from the map, through the greasy, insect-stained windshield. The wipers weren’t doing a good job on the drizzle, but she could still make out hills like soft green pincushions in the distance, a change from the unbroken plains they’d been traveling through all morning. “The next place should be Bear Claw Creek, I guess.”
    Matt worked his stiff shoulders up and down. “I reckon that’s where we stop to ask a few questions.”
    If the map was right, Bear Claw Creek was the last town before Rainbow Mountain and the only place where Kirstie and Matt would be likely to get information on Zak Stone. Suddenly, after the long, semi-dazed hours in the truck, Kirstie found herself sitting forward on the edge of her seat.
    She noticed a covered wooden bridge over a creek to their left, two haystacks perched on the low horizon. Beyond them there was a farm with white specks moving about in the yard, geese perhaps. Then, on the dirt road ahead, were two cowboys on horseback, well used ropes looped around their saddle horns, weathered chaps flapping wetly against their horses’ flanks.
    As Matt passed the two riders, he leaned out of his window. “Bear Claw Creek?” he asked.
    “Right up ahead,” came the low, slow reply. “’Bout a mile. You can’t hardly miss it!”
    “… Yeah, there!” After a minute or two, Kirstie was able to point to two rows of houses lining the road. They